She was on Bill Maher week before last. Sheâs a sharp cookie and knows the danger sheâs put herself in.
If sheâs willing to go, how many will follow along?
Another Democratic House Member with the courage and conviction to do her job.
Too bad Pelosi has neither.
Meanwhile, Trump is revving up to start âmass deportations.â Who is going to stop him?
Impeachment Now!
The tide is turning toward impeachment, ever so slowly. My guess is that sometime in the early fall it will reach the point where the House will start an inquiry. Of course, that means that we will have impeachment and the presidential campaign going on at the same time!
Hill doesnât have much to lose by doing this, despite the âswing districtâ stuff.
Sheâs already managed to make herself highly visible in hearings, with questioning of Mnuchin and especially Ben Carson (the âoreoâ moment". Sheâs been on Rachel a number of times as well.
Of course, that means that we will have impeachment and the presidential campaign going on at the same time!
As you know theyâre capable of doing both. But maybe we have to keep telling them as Iâm not sure they believe it themselves.
I really, really want to see Trump and his flying monkeys go after Katie Porter. I might even have a little sympathy for them if they werenât so fucking despicable.
I predicted Porter would switch a few days ago. I also now think that Mike Levin and Harley Rouda will support impeachment. Katie Hill will take a little longer but sheâll eventually move too I believe. Gil Cisneros will find it harder to say ânoâ to an inquiry when Katie Porter, his neighbor, says âyesâ. Heâs also in a district that is a bit more Dem than hers. TJ Cox intellectually gets the argument for impeachment but his district (rural central CA) required a lot of education just to get them to know that his opponent last year was in fact a Republican who voted with Trump. So he might take a while.
Iâd expect more blue district Dems to be shamed into supporting an inquiry now that you have Amash and purple/light blue district Dems like Porter, Malinowski, and Levin on board.
Iâm also getting the sense that Nancy Pelosi is starting to see the limits of her strategy. There was an article yesterday where Dems are complaining that their legislative agenda is not getting through in the polling and that the impression people have of the party is not where theyâd like it to be given that they have in fact delivered on a lot of their agenda at break neck speed. They passed around 200 bills. Karen Bass lamented about that in the town hall I attended last weekend, and that article seemed to reflect a similar sentiment so I do think there is some accuracy or credibility to the view expressed.
Pelosi would have really 2 options to get people to embrace and prioritize her agenda more:
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Open an impeachment inquiry and get through that process in about 3 months on the Mueller Report alone. Follow-up with separate committee inquiries which can continue on and result in criminal referrals. When voters are satisfied that Dems have in fact aired out the matters and voted out articles, censure or whatever, then Nancy can turn the page and focus more on her agenda.
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Say Case Closed. Take the heat for about 2 months and then come back with reintroducing the agenda.
Of the two, I think #1 provides the most political benefits. If Pelosi supports an inquiry, opposition to or skepticism of impeachment would drop to about 10% among Dems. People will trust her to make the political judgments (to article or not to article, to censure or not to censure etc). People will be satisfied that the Dems didnât showed fear and used the tools at their disposal to do what they could with the power they had to highlight Trumpâs crimes and plant some seeds of criminal liability and accountability for DOJ (which will be there for 2021) and the voters to consider.
I think #2 is probably where Nancy is depending on what time of the day you catch her, but sheâs smart enough to see that when 70% of Dems support impeachment, âcase closedâ will only divide the party in a way that is counterproductive to the cause.
Begin inquiry and stretch it out to October 2020.
I posted this on another thread earlier
Below (bottom)âŚthis is 12 hour-old news from Josh
This is tangential to the article we are commenting onâŚbut notice the makeup of Katieâs district. One thing I would like to point out is that she was on Maher a couple of Fridays ago and had to hem and haw a tad before answering a question from Maher on ImpeachmentâŚshe never answered the question and I thought she never wanted to (she was actually bailed out by another panelist on the show).
This could mean that, even in a GOP-ish district, the polling is shifting on Impeachment.
[Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) announces sheâs decided to support beginning an impeachment inquiry of President Trump. Hereâs the video of her announcement. The Cook Report rates her district (CA-45) as a R+3 district.]
This is exactly the sort of signal Iâve been waiting for. The Dems who took the House back mostly came from swing or Republican districts and theyâre the ones whoâve been on the fence, theyâre the ones Pelosi has rightly been protecting. As they start to trickle toward impeachment, so will leadership. It does us no damn good to impeach the bastard if it means potentially losing the House and/or reelecting him. Itâs utterly useless to those of us who care about saving democracy as opposed to railing against the Democratic Party.
Agreed. I want to move forward with impeachment, but it would be incredibly silly to do it before fall. The worst case scenario would be to hold impeachment hearings when nobodyâs paying attention. Heâs never going to be removed, so itâs absolutely pertinent that we do all we can to make sure that America is listening so that folks are mad as hell at the Senators who refuse to throw him out. We have to make acquittal a bigger general election political liability than voting to convict.
Nancy sez no. And thatâs the end of it.
The rest is just noise and chest-thumping opportunism.
Where I see some hope here is that I think Dem leadership is getting the message from their polling that their #forthepeople agenda isnât sinking into the electorate despite their prolific rate of passing bills. They know that impeachment is the 800 lb elephant in the room. Although it frustrates them I think theyâre smart enough to see that theyâre not going to get their preferred message out until they deal with this.
They may conclude that itâs better to move more quickly on an inquiry and get it fully out of the way by Nov-Dec so they can then win the attention of the base for their legislative agenda. The case closed approach would simply divide the party at this point.
This is what the so-called âslow walkingâ will eventually lead toâthe voluntary awakening, difficult but determined decision of House members. Give them more time and thereâll be more like Porter. I donât see this case as an argument for impeachment now. Quite the opposite.
Well said. Nancy was robbed of her Speakership because she stuck her neck out for the ACA in Obamaâs first term.
Because feckless, fair-weather Dems discovered that Obama did not have an âSâ on his chest and a cape, they stayed home in 2010, ceding the House to GOP rule for 8 years. Had we had the House in 2010, so much would have changed.
How many times have I seen on THIS thread the grumble âIâm through with the Democratsâ because of disagreements.
GOPers deserve all the animus they get from us. But they do NOT treat VOTING like boycotting a flower shop because the daisies are not on sale anymore.
We did that in 2010. And we sure as shit let ourselves get drawn into the Sarandon-ing and the boycotting in 2016
Itâs fair to say that, while we want this legislative agenda, we will never get anything through because McConnell. Democrats can run on that, but letâs face it: the legislative agenda hasnât broken through because the media refuse to cover it, preferring (as TPM does) to highlight the latest nonsense from the administration. Whenâs the last time any coverage of the current session of Congress has covered anything resembling passage of legislation? Ask yourself that honestly.
If we want people to pay attention to whatâs being done in Congress, we have to actually show Congress doing something. Right now, Congressional approval is in the tank because thereâs no coverage for whatâs actually going on. When the inquiries start (not if, but when), possibly the media will begin to cover it. Whether the media turn positive or negative on it is something I can probably guess the outcome on, but at least there would be coverage of Congress doing something rather than the current perception of doing nothing.
Thatâs the ticket. Republicans dragged Benghazi and the emails for years.
Her statement said it all.
Now, Democrats, letâs steel ourselves and put our shoulders to the wheel.
(Or, as Dwight David Eisenhower put it, âLetâs put our shoulders to the wheel and carry it down the fairway.â)
I know the district well. I think what youâre seeing is that there isnât that much difference between Dems and Dem leaning independents on this issue. In fact, Dem leaning independents might be a little more left on some issues than mainline Dems. People sometimes assume that indie means centrist or more conservative than average Dems. Itâs not that black and white. It varies based on the issue.
The truth is that Dems in purple districts get most of their votes from Democrats. You canât ignore your base. Thatâs what Porter is seeing and she also recognizes that she canât argue for a muddled position on impeachment and advocate for bold positions on things like corporate regulations and be effective.
unfortunately, it would take three months to really get the committee up and running. First off, it would need to issue new subpoenas. The process of even getting them to court will take at least a month.
(unsurprisingly) I support my own idea. Start the process, but restrict hearing to two days a week, and demand message discipline of anyone who talks to the media. Defer to the impeachment committee if asked about those issues, challenge the media to cover what the Dems are doing, and always be pushing that weekâs message/agenda.
Which, of course, is something that weâve been saying for months now. Until Pelosi allows impeachment to go forward, the âare we there yetâ story will suck most of the oxygen out of the room. And âcase closedâ wonât work, btw â each time a new story breaks, the impeachment movement will be revitalized, and Pelosi will begin to look like an ineffective autocrat.